The film industry often needs to operate in areas where mains electricity is inaccessible. At remote locations, choices are very much limited on how to power the cameras and other electrical equipment, and diesel generators are usually selected. There are a lot of problems with diesel, as well as being bad for the environment and noisy, the electricity generated is ‘dirty’ and needs filtering before being used in sensitive equipment, such as lighting.
JD Schwalm, CEO of ReVolt, who worked on special effects in the industry at the time, was building wind machines on location at the set workshop, when he thought there must be a better way to deliver constant power rather than burn diesel. He then developed an inverter and battery system, similar to those found in an electric vehicle. The trial was successful, so much so that there was excess power that could feed into the supply for the rest of the set. That was a light bulb moment for Schwalm, who realized that if he took the technology further, he could power a whole set that way.
Schwalm explains, “that idea started ReVolt. We have three designs - the WeVolt with 17.5kWh capacity and 14kW output, the Mule with 210kWh capacity and 120kW output, and the Van with 400kWh capacity and 350kW output. We built our ecosystem, so that a unit can be dropped on the film set and produce endless power. We feed everything into the Mule, and when it gets low, the Van pulls up, just like a fuel truck, and plugs into the Mule and recharges the battery while it is still outputting power. There's no transfer switches, and there's no taking overloads”.
To develop the vehicles, Schwalm turned to Vicor for assistance. The two companies already had an existing relationship from when Schwalm needed powerful, stable and clean power supplies to run motion control computers. He expands, “When we started with ReVolt. We went back to Vicor and realized how efficiently they can convert very high voltage down to very low voltage. We use EVCCs in the Mule and in the Van to allow them to charge at public networks. Then the Van has an EVCC inside to essentially turn itself into a supercharger. The Mule has very similar architecture, and features a 310Ah battery, at around 730V nominal. On the output side, we have DC/AC inverters, to create the AC signal. The other section of the architecture is going from 730V down to 24V to run our control logic. We use Vicor products for that conversion. The BCM4414 converts down to 48V and the DCM3414 takes that output to 24V. We are currently looking to change to a single stage conversion using another Vicor part”.
From starting in the film industry, ReVolt sees the same technology is just as desirable to other industries, and it has started branching out to the construction industry and live events.
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